


Pravda

by alittlebriton



Category: Alias (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4485175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlebriton/pseuds/alittlebriton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set sometime during S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pravda

Jack wakes up in the dead of night, clammy skin sticking to sheets. He can smell chlorine. He pulls the covers back and pads in bare feet to the kitchen. He looks at the faucet for a moment, deliberating, and then turns to the scotch. In his armchair he stares at his books, watches the clock tick the minutes by, ignores the promise of warmth that the empty fireplace gives. He’s not sure what he is waiting for.

Jack wakes up in the dead of night, a cold breeze skimming across his bare skin. He can taste champagne. He heads to the armchair again, ice clinking gently in the glass as he sits down. He examines the bricks around the mantelpiece as if they are the key to some great mystery. He knows he is missing something.

Jack wakes up in the dead of night, adrenaline reaching his muscles. He can smell gun powder. The familiar feel of the armchair irritates him, but he doesn’t move from his position. He tries to ignore what his subconscious is telling him. He makes a decision.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I’m leaving Dixon in charge for a few days.” Sydney looks up at him from her case work, brow furrowed. The bright lights of APO remind him that she is getting older and more beautiful every day.

“Where are you going? Is it to do with the incident in Brazil?”

“No, I’m just… checking out another avenue. I’ll be in Prague if you need to contact me.”

“Prague, huh? Nice city. Quite romantic.”

“And when were you last in Prague?”

“Rambaldi stuff during SD-6. I think I killed someone with my shoe.” Jack stares at his daughter, who is trying to hide a grin.

“Yes, that sounds just like my idea of romance.” Jack walks away, confident she will make an untraceable call later that day. Someone will pick him up from the airport.

It is drizzling when he reaches Prague, grey weather for a grey stone city. A sleek black car pulls up to where Jack is waiting outside the arrivals doors, and Jack only hesitates for a second before opening the rear door and getting in. He closes the door then wishes he hadn’t when he sees who is in the car with him. Sark smiles at Jack’s immediate clenching of fists.

“Irina will be happy to see you. I’m simply here to make sure you get there safely.” Jack notes the words.

“And my return?” Sark merely nods, as if Jack has passed some test. The boy’s arrogance sometimes astounds Jack until he remembers who trained him.

“That will be safe too. Can I offer you a drink?" 

“You can, but I won’t accept.” Jack feels for the soothing presence of his gun, strapped beneath his arm. Sark doesn’t even look remotely offended.

The car takes them through the small streets of the city, passing the Jewish quarter, and draws up outside a restaurant. Jack stares for a minute, then turns to Sark.

“This was her choice of location, wasn’t it?” Sark shrugs noncommittally, but the flash of teeth gives away the answer. Jack opens the door of the car and doesn’t look back. He walks into the restaurant, scans the room briefly then heads for the back of the room, and sure enough, tucked away in a corner is a table set for two and his wife. He takes off his jacket and gives it to a waiter without taking his eyes off her.

She was stunning when she was younger, but she never commanded the room. Now it seems that this entire place was made just for her, and by the curling smile she gives him, she enjoys her power. But then, they both already knew that.

“Pravda? I see your sense of irony hasn’t changed.”

“I thought you would appreciate it. Wine? I thought champagne would not be appropriate.” He nods, and tilts his glass, watches the red liquid swirl as she pours. Every gesture has meaning when it is Irina, and if she is serving him then she wants something in return.

“How is Sydney? Julian said she was surprised to hear his voice on the end of the line.” Jack smiles at the understatement; he can imagine the fury that Sark must have been greeted with.

“I can imagine. I didn’t know he was back in your employ. Feeling nostalgic?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

He avoids the implication in her voice, her meaning dancing like smoke over the table. “Sydney’s fine. She is doing well, considering.”

“And Nadia? Is there any change? I’ve nearly exhausted all my contacts looking for a cure.” At the ragged note that creeps into her voice, Jack lays his hand on the table, close to hers. He doesn’t touch her.

“Still no change. Sloane has been released. The only thing on his mind is how to make his daughter well again.” Irina smiles at this and drops her eyes, a private joke that Jack is not privy to. Jack moves his hand away to reach for his glass.

“What do you want, Jack?” Startled by her direct question, he glances up and meets her eyes. She has that look on her face, the one she gets before she hurts someone, when she looks right through them.

“Are you trying to see into my soul, Irina?” His mouth quirks, daring her to laugh. Or at least stop toying with the knife that turns in her fingers, catching the light. The reflections play on her face, and Jack is thrown back to when the water reflected thousands of waves of light across the room, and her hair, and her blood.

“Always.” She smiles humourlessly back at him, and doesn’t stop twisting the knife in her hands. “Am I making you nervous?”

“Always”, he shoots back at her. She curls her mouth and then it splits into her slow grin, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, and Jack is momentarily blinded.

“I knew I chose this restaurant for a reason”, she says, and Jack is facing Laura again after he proposed in the small trattoria in Venice. She had said that it looked too romantic to _not_ eat in, and then he had proved her right, and she had used those exact words for her acceptance. He wonders if she has forgotten this, or if she got tired of the physical knife and wanted to make some emotional wounds. He wonders which he would be more hurt by.

“I wanted to see you." 

“When the world isn’t in danger? It is dangerous for you to come here, you know.”

“I know.”

“Jack”, she grins, “You are becoming softer in your old age.” He turns the corners of his mouth upwards at the insult.

“It occurred to me that I barely know you.”

“You know everything you need to.” Only her eyes respond honestly with regret flashing across them. Their fingers find each other on the table, entwine, feeling the years through skin.

“You have seen me through life and birth, and death, twice. It doesn’t matter that sometimes you used a different name when you called for me.” He looks at their hands and remembers legs wrapped around his as she climbed up his body, laughing, after he came home from work. He forcibly pushes the image out of his head.

“I didn’t come for an attempted trip down memory lane.”

“No, you came for a future.” Her voice is rough and matter-of-fact. Jack holds her gaze. She stands and pulls him with her. Bodies not touching and yet they are inexplicably entwined, unable to draw apart.

“It always takes time, Jack.” He looks her up and down, takes her hand in his and smiles fully for the first time.

“Time is all we have.”

The couple leave the restaurant, the woman in front, leading the way. A knife slips off the abandoned table and clatters to the floor, spilled wine bleeding across the tablecloth.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jack comes back to his apartment, the cat rubbing herself frantically against his legs so that he’ll feed her. The bricks are the same, the books are in the same place and the scotch is still running low. Nothing has changed. Nothing of his old life remains.

That night, while Jack sleeps, cat on the end of the bed purring and independent, he dreams of oaks trees and silk, sliding over skin, and of wine and warmth.

The next night, while Jack sleeps, cat on the end of the bed purring and independent, he dreams of light and smoke, endless reflections of promises and vows.

The night after that, while Jack sleeps, cat on the end of the bed purring and independent, he does not dream. The clock on his bedside table ticks loudly in the night’s silence, and Jack Bristow does not wake.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Pravda: Russian for ‘the truth’; also the main Russian Soviet newspaper after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. The original Pravda was founded by Trotsky in Vienna in 1908. It is also the name of a fantastic restaurant in Prague on Parizska, near the old Jewish ghetto.


End file.
